CYBERPHYSIOLOGY

The Science of Self-Regulation

The greatest thing in all education is to make the
nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
-WILLIAM JAMES
Arnold Cohen, a physician, elected to have hospital
surgery on his elbow without the use of painkilling
drugs or chemical anesthesia. Instead, the operation was
performed while he was under hypnosis. He experienced
no pain during the surgery or in the recovery period that
followed.
Susy Smith, an 8-year-old spina bifida patient, has
spent most of her young life in the hospital fighting one life-threatening crisis after
another. Her pediatrician has taught her a simple form of relaxation and self-induced
imagery, which allows her to anesthetize different parts of her body at will in preparation
for shots or to remain comfortable during complex invasive diagnostic procedures.
Ann Washburn, a secretary in her mid-thirties, was diagnosed as having severe
hypertension. She was put on standard medication, and her condition stabilized. She was
then taught a simple technique for inducing systematic relaxation, which she practices for
20 minutes a day. Within a short time, her physician was able to reduce the necessary
medication by more than 50 Percent.
The idea that consciousness plays a part in the healing process is not a new one. Galen,
around 200 A.D., advocated the analysis of dreams as a way to determine the nature and
severity of humoral imbalances. Agrippa in 1510 pointed out that the patient's hope for
cure and love for the physician sometimes conduced more to health than did the medicine
itself. George Miller Beard, pioneer American neurologist in the 1870s, noting that
physicians use psychology daily in their practice, advocated that science study the
potency of definite expectation in the cause and cure of disease. In the modern period, a
variety of medical disorders have been identified as having a strong psychological
component, and therefore have been found responsive to treatment by dynamic
psychotherapy. Numerous psychosocial factors are now routinely identified as
contributing to many illnesses.

CYBERPHYSIOLOGY: cyber from the Greek root kybernan, "to steer," from which is derived
kybernet(es), meaning "the helmsman." From the Latin form comes the English, "gubernatorial."

But the possibility that consciousness could be trained to alter involuntary bodily
processes has only recently become an area of systematic investigation, alternately
referred to as behavioral medicine or as the voluntary control of internal states. Earl
Bakken, bioengineer and founder of Medtronic, Inc., in Minneapolis, has proposed the
new terms cyberbiology and cyberphysiology, which serve to bring a growing number of
research efforts under a single rubric that denotes the reciprocal effects of consciousness
and physiology.
Cyberphysiology is the study of how
neurally mediated autonomic
responses, usually viewed as reactive
reflexes, can be modified by a learning
process that appears to be significantly
dependent on image design or figures
of thought. That is, simple instruction
in physical relaxation techniques,
coupled with awareness of breathing
patterns, and the use of a person's
capacity for inner visualization, appear
to be the prerequisite ingredients for
the motivated subject to induce a state
of heightened, inwardly directed
awareness that can lead to either direct
or indirect control of physiological
processes.
THE PROBABLE PATHWAY OF
ACTION
The way in which human beings form
images in the brain is not well
understood, partly because imagery is
not localized in only one site, and
imagining also involves numerous associative processes. Studies in hemispheric
lateralization, for instance, show that the left hemisphere is dominant for calculation and
language, while the right hemisphere is dominant for spatial construction, simple
language comprehension, and nonverbal ideation. Numerous authors have suggested that
imagery may be mediated by the right hemisphere, but the left must play some role in the
process. Experimental evidence shows, for instance, that it mediates such functions as
size discrimination, when such differences in images must be stored and called forth for
use at a later time.
On the other hand, brain lesion studies support the contention that not only nonverbal
images but also body image may be right hemisphere dominant. For instance, lesions in
the right parietal lobe result in a syndrome in which the patient may fail to recognize part
of the body, denying it to the extent that it may not be washed, covered, or otherwise
cared for. Also, lobectomies, performed on patients in past decades for severe psychiatric

disorders, implicated the right frontal cortex as one probable area where mental images
might be dominant. Patients who underwent this procedure not only lacked emotional
reactivity and motivation, but also showed disruption of the temporal ordering of events
and seemed unable to fantasize or imagine a future. In particular, they showed complete
loss of ability for delayed action, in which an interim picture must be held in the mind.
In addition to mental imagery, motivation and emotion have been related to
neurochemical processing in the frontal lobes. Through many known fibers, the frontal
lobes have projections into the limbic system, which is considered the subcortical area for
emotional integration. Indeed, some researchers refer to the frontolimbic system as the
principal neurochemical mediating center of emotions.
While there is some debate as to the precise structures that should be included in the
limbic system, the amygdala, hippocampus, septal area, and cingulate cortex are usually
included. The limbic system has been associated experimentally with the sense of smell,
the experience of pleasure and pain (and hence with reward and punishment), social
interaction, and even violent behavior.

Typically, the hypothalamus is singled out as a separate system of sorts that is only partly
involved in limbic activation, but functionally, many, if not all, of the effects produced by
stimulation or lesions in the other limbic structures can be attained by similar operations
on the hypothalamus itself. The hypothalamus is implicated in the physiology of

homeostasis and the neurochemical regulation of such diverse behaviors as eating,

drinking, sleeping, sexual function, physical activity, and generally in establishing the
body's circadian rhythms. Its functioning also affects heart-rate, respiration, blood
chemistry and glandular activity. Most recently, it has been demonstrated that the
hypothalamus is involved in the immunological response to disease. Stimulation of
certain areas can produce decreases in the activity of macrophages, while adjacent areas
of the hypothalamus are also involved in enhancement of the immune response.
Although the precise mechanism is not clear, guided mental imagery and deep breathing
appear to induce a quieting effect on nervous system activity, chiefly by acting on
hypothalamic and limbic structures, which have direct neurological connections into the
autonomic nervous system. This system innervates glandular tissue, the heart, lungs,
stomach, liver, pancreas, intestine, bladder, and sexual organs. Controlled breathing and
guided visualization also appear to act on the reticular activating system, a diffuse
network of nerves responsible for widespread nonspecific arousal, which can be either
heightened or quieted throughout the entire body by a correspondingly exciting or
quieting mental image. Thus, relaxation and mental imagery techniques appear to be
related to the hypothalamic-limbic-reticular axis.
Opposed to this avenue of activation are the
effects of stress, which, especially from
prolonged heightened arousal, appear to be
linked to a competing configuration, the
adreno-medullary-pituitary axis.
STRESS
Heightened arousal was first identified by
Walter Cannon as being associated with the
"fight-flight" response. In threatening
situations, the body mobilizes its forces to
cope with an incoming emergency by
activating the adrenal medulla, which leads to
activation of the pituitary gland. Adrenalin is
released into the blood, which stimulates
receptors to shunt blood away from the
digestive organs and toward skeletal muscles
in preparation for action. Adrenalin also
increases the tendency of blood to coagulate,
which is useful in preventing blood loss from
wounds. Peptides are released in the brain
that cause the adrenal glands to produce
corticosteroids, which release fatty acids to
supply energy to the muscles. Insulin is also increased for an added source of immediate
energy.

All of these reactions have been biologically useful for survival, but modern research has
found that prolonged activation of the stress response, especially in the absence of
physical outlets, such as vigorous physical exercise or the actual conditions of battle, may
lead to a variety of ailments, from chronic indigestion, ulcers, and high blood pressure, to
a buildup of cholesterol, aggravation of diabetes, and lowered immune functioning. Hans
Selye identified an adaptation syndrome of ever-increasing compensation for prolonged
stress that culminates in the death of the organism. It is also known that extreme and
violent shock from fright can, through this axis, lead to such phenomena as sudden
cardiac arrest, which Cannon and Alvarez described as the likely cause of voodoo death.
THE RELAXATION RESPONSE
By the employment of readily available cyberphysiologic techniques, a trained lowering
of arousal, on the other hand, has been experimentally associated with restoration of
homeostatic balance and renewed health and vigor. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist who is
head of the Behavioral Medicine Section at Harvard Medical School and the Deaconess
Hospital in Boston, has identified what he believes is a physiological template common
to almost all such techniques that he calls the relaxation response, an integrated
hypothalamic activity resulting in generalized decreased sympathetic nervous system
firing, with possible parasympathetic activation.
He has defined four elements needed to elicit this response: (1) a sound, word, or phrase
that can be constantly repeated in the mind; (2) a passive attitude; (3) decreased muscle
tonus; and (4) a quiet environment. Practice of the relaxation response for only 20
minutes a day decreases oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide elimination, without
changing respiratory quotient; it decreases blood pressure; it also decreases blood lactate
(a change associated with lowered stress); and increases the intensity of slow alpha
waves, which are associated with restful alertness.
Ischemic heart patients taught this technique show a decrease in premature ventricular
contractions. Patients suffering from hypertension who learn the relaxation response
require much less medication than usual. In normal subjects, it may actually be a
prophylactic measure against hypertension. Perhaps most significant, patients in a health
maintenance organization who were taught the relaxation response had faster recovery
from illnesses and incurred lower costs than a comparable control group simply given
regular medical treatment.
Benson maintains that the physiological effects of the relaxation response are generic to a
wide range of techniques taught by the world's contemplative religious traditions, which
elicit the same underlying physiological responses as a first step in systematic spiritual
practice. He accounts for the dramatic differences that the various techniques produce by
the differences in cognitive context, which determine the direction physiological
reactions will take by the particular cognitive goal described in the different philosophies.
Hence, he concludes, the individual's consensually shared world of meanings, beliefs, and
values, play a major role in the long-term outcome of such practice.

He believes that the relaxation response is also the basic template for a wide range of
cyberphysiologic techniques currently of interest to behavioral medicine, including
hypnosis, biofeedback, yoga, and meditation. The relaxation response may also be the
generic first step toward the eventual experimental regulation of the immune system.
These are, however, only a few of many techniques that may have cyberphysiologic
consequences, for therapeutic intervention in the treatment of illness, and for education as
a form of self-development.
HYPNOSIS
Once thought of as magical or mysterious, hypnosis is rapidly becoming accepted as an
appropriate form of treatment for numerous disorders. Some primary care physicians are
beginning to discover the value of hypnotherapy in controlling chronic disease and pain,
in changing negative behavior, and in facilitating self-regulation of autonomic responses.
A useful definition put forward by Karen N. Olness, Professor of Pediatrics at Case
Western Reserve University, is that hypnosis is an alternative state of awarenessoften
but not always involving relaxationin which an individual develops heightened
concentration, which allows him to accept suggestions to use mental or physical faculties
in an optimal fashion to solve a problem, improve a skill, or maximize some potential.
The hypnotic state may best be described, she says, as effectively analogous to
pretending, daydreaming, imagining, or to being fully absorbed in some activity, such as
reading a good book, watching a TV program, or attending a concert. Fixed attention,
imagery, and concentration on an image with its associated feelings are factors in formal
hypnotic induction. Parents unwittingly learn this in getting a tired child to fall asleep.
Some of the more successful teachers, coaches, and salespersons may stumble on this
phenomenon by fine-tuning their respective approaches to dealing successfully with
people. It is also common for people to drop into this state automatically at peak
moments, such as a birth or wedding, or in states of high anxiety.
The hypnotherapist, Olness points out, possesses no special powers. Instead, the patient is
actually the self-hypnotizer, while the role of the one inducing the trance is that of coach
or guide.
Olness has had extensive experience in conducting experiments with children, whom she
has found learn cyberphysiologic techniques of self-hypnosis faster than adolescents and
adults, chiefly because young children are more in touch with their inner lives and have
more active imaginations. Controlled studies by her and her colleagues have
demonstrated that children are able to regulate peripheral temperature, auditory evoked
potentials, bronchial dilatation, transcutaneous oxygen flow, cardiac rate, and anorectal
sphincter responses. In clinical practice, she has found self-hypnosis useful as a
therapeutic modality in a variety of problems, including enuresis, acute pain, chronic
pain, asthma, habit disorders, and anxiety.

Other researchers have had similar results. In one of the more interesting studies reported
in the literature, Surman, Gottlieb, Hackett, and Silverberg, at the Massachusetts General
Hospital, showed that warts, although thought to be viral in origin, could be suggested
away under hypnosis. Surman and other colleagues have also been experimenting with
hypnosis, in conjunction with supportive psychotherapy, in an attempt to control the
clinical course of herpes simplex virus in severely affected individuals, since herpes has
been shown previously to recur under stress. Thus, experimental and clinical evidence for
the efficacy of hypnosis suggests that it has many potential uses in a medical setting.
BIOFEEDBACK
Biofeedback involves the mechanical or electrical recording of physiological processes,
usually heart rate, internal body temperature, brain wave activity, respiration, blood
pressure, or muscle tension, and the feeding back of this information to the subject, who
is then able, with appropriate instruction and motivation, to self-regulate these activities.
One of the most extensive programs of biofeedback research has been conducted at the
Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, by Elmer and Alyce Green. Subjects have
been successfully trained to reduce striate muscle tension, to show control over the firing
of single muscle units, and to raise the temperature in the hands through vasodilation of
the smooth muscle tissue surrounding the capillaries.
In clinical applications, biofeedback has proved helpful as an adjunct in the treatment of
Reynaud's disease, in the control of cardiac arrthymias, high blood pressure,
gastrointestinal disorders, tension headaches, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy.
One of the most interesting innovations in modem biofeedback technology that may
significantly influence our standard of normal health is voluntary cardiorespiratory
synchronization (VCRS), first developed by John Almasi, along with Otto Schmitt of the
University of Minnesota. Subjects are taught to synchronize their breathing and heart rate
to a predetermined ratio by a system of lights linked to the subject's body signals and sent
through a computer. Virtually all variability in the continuously produced
electrocardiogram signal is eliminated, whereas in normal ECG recordings the exact
shape and amplitude of the electrocardiographic signatures will change significantly from
beat to beat.
Initial tests in over 200 individuals, including university staff, students, and hospital
patients, have established that VCRS can be quickly and easily achieved by almost any
cooperative individual. After as little as 30 seconds of practice, the subject breathes
comfortably and accurately at a pace regulated by his electronic Inhale/Exhale instruction
lights.

This advance suggests the possibility of

more accurate standards of heart rate
functions for different age populations; it
would give a highly accurate and
personalized record of normal individual
functioning; and it would allow the
detection of minute changes in normal
cardiac activity, so that pathology could be
more quickly identified.
Biofeedback has become an accepted tool
in clinical practice. At the same time, a
little-understood aspect of its application is
the attendant changes in consciousness
associated with health and the feeling of
wellbeing. In the opinion of the Greens at
the Menninger Foundation, changes in
consciousness may well prove important in
future medical applications of biofeedback
technology.
YOGA
Yoga, as it has been traditionally practiced in India, is a 2,000-year-old psychophysical
regime consisting in cleansing of the body and purification of the mind in preparation for
the mastery of "perfect one-pointed concentration," which the practitioner then turns
within and focuses on inner events.
Scientific studies of yoga practitioners conducted under strict laboratory conditions show
progressively finer control of skeletal muscle groups as well as respiratory control of the
vascular system. Sweat glands can be made to open on command, heart rate can be
reduced to half the normal rate by blocking the action of the sinoatrial node, and basal
metabolic rate can be reduced by 50 percent, allowing the subject to go into a quiescent
state of semihibernation without losing consciousness.
A striking series of measurements was taken at the Menninger Foundation, when the
Greens investigated the abilities of Swami Kama of Rishikesh. (See the diagrams of
simultaneous warming and cooling of the hand and voluntary heart control on the
previous page.) The swami was able to raise the skin temperature on one side of his hand
and he was able to lower it on the other side. The difference was more than 11 degrees.
He also demonstrated the ability to have his heart go into atrial flutter with no undue
aftereffects.
Recently, yoga has increasingly become a more active area of medical and scientific
investigation. Studies have shown that a group of healthy volunteers given 90 days of
yoga training show significant increase in their exercise tolerance. Hypertensive patients

given 6 months' yoga training showed a statistically significant drop in both systolic and
diastolic pressure, while those on antihypertensive medication showed a significant
reduction in daily drug dosage. A group of untrained males taught yoga exercises for a 4month period showed enhanced coagulation of blood as per specific variables, such as
fibrinolytic activity, blood and plasma level, and platelet aggregation time. After yoga
training, patients with pleural effusion were able to expand their lungs more quickly than
a comparable control group. Yoga, in general, is being more widely practiced in the
United States, not simply as a form of therapeutic intervention, but also as a daily regime
for the maintenance of good health.
MEDITATION
Meditation means sustained and effortless vigilance of one's own consciousness, with a
view toward enhancing the quality of personal experience. This may involve a specific
focus on cognitive processes, or a single idea, or it may involve the attempt to achieve a
noncognitive but heightened awareness where the mind is deliberately taught to empty
itself of all thought.
Deikman has identified meditation as deautomatizationa perceptual reorganization of
the psychological structures that order, limit, select, and interpret physical stimuli. He
defined it as an undoing of the ongoing process of unconscious habit formation, by
reinvesting actions and percepts with attention. In his experimental subjects he noted
alteration of perception, time underestimation, paradoxical thoughts, desensitization to
external stimulation, and personal attachment to the object of concentration.
Kamiya, noting that alpha brain waves are associated with meditation, used the
electroencephalograph to teach college students who had no experience in personal
disciplines to generate alpha waves and to sustain them over long periods.
Brown and Engler used questionnaires and Rorschach responses to compare three groups
of meditators, all of whom had training in Vipassana, or Buddhist "insight" meditation: a
mixed group of Western meditators with different levels of experience who were
attending a month long intensive training session, a selected group of advanced Western
meditators, and a group of advanced teachers in Asia. Results tended to corroborate that
meditation induces definable stages of change in the subjective experience of
consciousness, which initially are temporary, but may lead to permanent alteration of
personality. Epstein and Leiff have defined these stages: (1) Distraction of awareness by
somatic, affective, and cognitive disturbances; (2) transient, undisturbed concentration on
an internal object; (3) single-minded cultivation of concentration on the object; and (4)
the production of insight into the object and into one's own cognitive processes.
Studies also suggest that cognitive context leads to measurable differences in the
meditative state. Bal K. Anand of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences,
demonstrated that advanced yogis in deep meditation showed no alpha-blocking when
presented with a series of disturbing outside stimuli, whereas the startle response usually
blocks alpha production in normal subjects. This effect is commensurate with the goal of

yoga as kaivalya, complete isolation of consciousness from sensory impressions. At the

same time, Kasamatsu and Harai demonstrated that Zen monks in meditation showed
alpha blocking only at the instantaneous presentation of the external stimulus, whereas
the effect perseverates in normal subjects. This is commensurate with the Zen teaching
that the satori experience is "neither here nor there." Stimuli are acknowledged, but for
what they are, empty and impermanent, so there is no prolonged mental attachment to
them.
Finally, Shapiro has proposed meditation as a cyberphysiologic technique for self-control
in a variety of applications, including smoking cessation and obesity. He has also
outlined its usefulness in conjunction with more traditional forms of therapeutic
intervention in reducing alcohol consumption and in lowering methadone dosage among
abusers.
PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY
Voluntary immunoregulation means the use of personal consciousness for purposes of
regulating the body's immune systema complex network of cells in the blood, lymph,
and certain organs that help us resist infection and fight off disease.
That the immune system can be altered through training has been recently shown by
Robert Ader at the University of Rochester, who succeeded in instrumentally
conditioning immunosuppression in rats. It has also been fairly well established that
psychosocial factors can alter susceptibility to infection, especially if they are of a
stressful nature. Experimental studies have shown that depression, grief, prolonged
anxiety, and even loss of sleep can cause alterations in serum immune levels, although it
is presently unclear how these stressors lead directly to greater infection or mortality.
Peavy found that, in a group of 41 healthy volunteer subjects, those showing indications
of high stress evinced significantly lowered immunity, as assessed by white blood cell
count, white blood cell differentiation, and a test of phagocytic function. When these
subjects were trained in biofeedback-assisted relaxation to lower tension in the forehead,
slow the heart rate, and raise the hand temperature, they showed a dramatic and
statistically significant improvement in phagocytic functioning, although white blood cell
count and white blood cell differentiation did not change.
Schneider, Smith, and Whitcher studied the influence of relaxation and imagery (without
hypnosis) on immune functioning in healthy medical students who were optimistic about
influencing their immune systems. Subjects were asked to relax and imagine
neutrophilsa subclass of white blood cells activated in inflammatory conditions to
ingest cells or particlesleaving the blood stream, moving to the blood vessel walls,
becoming more adherent, changing shape, and moving out through the blood vessel
walls. They were told that this was an immunocompetent response. Blood samples taken
before and after visualization suggest that white blood cell count and particularly
neutrophil adherence can be modulated by higher central nervous system activity.

Studies also suggest that natural killer cell activity (NK)- components of the body's
immune system that can target and destroy cancer and virus cells may be influenced
through psychological techniques. Scardino has reported increase in NK cell number
following relaxation and imagery exercises, and Cou-sins has reported the same effect
after self-induction of strong positive emotion. At the same time, Locke has found that
good copers, that is, individuals characterized by high stress who did not report many
symptoms or complaints, show high levels of natural killer cell activity, as compared
with those who are under high stress but who complain a great deal, whose NK levels
were significantly lower.
Other experiments, conducted by David McClelland and colleagues at Harvard
University, have linked high need for power with excessive adrenalin release, lowered
salivary and serum immunocompetence, and greater susceptibility to infection,
particularly when their subjects were highly motivated for power but blocked in their
efforts to dominate their environment. Using films to stimulate various psychological
states, McClelland and Kirshnit also showed that salivary immunoglobulin A (S-IgA), a
B-cell mediated function of the immune systemthe body's first line of defense against
viral infections that enter through the nose and mouthrose among college students
exposed to a film about Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whereas there was no comparable rise
in S-IgA levels among students exposed to a film about the triumph of the Nazi in World
War II.
What the precise mechanism of action is between
mental states and. immune competence has not
been definitely established. It has long been held
that the immune system operates in relative
independence from fluctuations of
electrochemical activity and hormone secretion,
chiefly because immune function can be
demonstrated for specific cells of this system in a
test tube, independent of the internal environment
of the tissues. However, scientists presently are
busy mapping out previously unrecognized lines
of interconnection between nerves, hormones, and
immune cells. This search involves not only the
laying out of direct neuronal connections to such
areas as the bone marrow, the spleen, and the
lymph glands, where synaptic circuits can be
anatomically traced, but also an entirely new
avenue of communication between the brain and
body through the action of the neuropeptides.
Francis Schmitt, a neurobiologist at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has
proposed the hypothesis that neurons may be
functionally regulated not only by presently
known neurotransmitters but by many other kinds
of informational substances, which include

transmitters, peptides, hormones, "factors," and various proteins. He believes that

alongside neuronal circuitry, which is the basis of conventional neuroanatomy and which
operates through conventional synaptic junctions, there is a parasynaptic system, working
in parallel with synapse-linked circuitry. In this alternate information system, chemical
substances reach specific target cell receptors by diffusion from release points through
the ambient extracellular fluids.
Consider, as an example, the neuropeptides-protein chains produced in the brain. In the
center of the ordinary nerve cell, as in any cell, is the DNA, which stores the genetic
information to make our bodies and our brains. A direct printout of the DNA leads to the
production of a neuropeptide, which then traverses down the axons of the nerve cell to be
stored in little balls at the end and waits for the right electrophysical events to release it.
Throughout the body, hooked onto different cells or moving about the tissues, are
receptors so specific as to attract or attach to only those neuropeptides that are their
analogue.
Candace Pert, Chief of the Section on Brain Biochemistry at the National Institute of
Mental Health, has conducted extensive experimental studies of the neuropeptides and
their various receptor sites distributed throughout the body. She concluded that the largest
portion of information coming from the brain is kept in order not by close physical
juxtaposition of nerve cells, but by the specificity of the receptors, whose site may be far
from the origin of neuropeptide release.
Among other important contributions, Pert and her colleagues propose that the massing
of receptors in the limbic system, amygdala, and hypothalamus point to the likelihood
that the neuropeptides are keys to the biochemical basis of the emotions. Other nodal
points for the massing of receptors are also implicated in emotional modulation, such as
the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, where sensory information first enters the central
nervous system on its way to the brain. For virtually all the senses where the entry area
into the nervous system is known, at those centers there is a massing of neuropeptide
receptors. Another site for neuropeptide receptors is the lining of the gut, from the
esophagus to the large intestines. A certain amount of experimental evidence suggests
that each neuropeptide may evoke a unique "tone" that is equivalent to a mood state.
Hence, there may be something to the colloquial expression of a "gut feeling." At the
same time, moods that we self-consciously create, through music, fantasy, or other
means, no doubt generate significant neuropeptide release keyed to specific receptor
sites.
Further, Pert maintains that every neuropeptide receptor identified so far can be found on
mobile cells of the immune system, that immune cells also produce peptides, which send
information to the brain, and that these neuropeptide links may be the main route by
which the brain, the emotions, and the immune system are connected. Monocytes, for
example, which ingest foreign organisms, heal wounds, and activate tissue repair, start
life in the bone marrow, and then diffuse out and travel through the veins and arteries,
deciding where to go by following chemical clues. When it comes within "scenting"
distance of a neuropeptide, its receptors for that neuropeptide are activated, and the cell
begins to "chemotax," or literally to crawl, toward that chemical. The routing of

monocytes throughout the body appears to be controlled by these emotion-effecting

biochemicals, which in turn allows communication between B- and Tcells. It helps
distinguish between self and not-self when a tumor cell is destroyed and mediates such
vital functions as tissue repair.
Pert concludes that it is no longer tenable to talk as if consciousness were localized in the
brain. Due to the two-way nature of the communication between receptors and
neuropeptides, she suggests, consciousness may be diffused throughout the body as an
electrochemical network that masses at particular nodal points, where entry into any part
of the network leads to all other parts. While only speculation, it is likely that, through
these routes, cyberphysiologic techniques may have their greatest effect through the
conscious alteration of moods.
That we are influenced by the state of the immune system is certain; that we may
consciously influence it is less sure. As yet, no direct and incontrovertibly causal link has
been experimentally established between mental states, specific illnesses, and
compromised immunity, although there is much provocative but circumstantial evidence.
To establish such a link, orits corollaryto gain conscious, systematic, and
instrumental control over immune functioning, is a potential goal of cyberphysiology that
may well constitute one of the next major breakthroughs in medical science.
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CYBERPHYSIOLOGY:
The Science of Self-Regulation
No. 2 in a series, Time, Mind, and Medicine
No. 1: CHRONOBIOLOGY: A Science in Tune with the Rhythms of Life (1986)

writing
Eugene Taylor
Associate in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University; Consultant in the History of
Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital
We would like to thank all the authors and publishers who have given us permission to reproduce their text
quotations and illustrations. Most of all we would like to acknowledge the assistance of our advisors:
Stephen E. Locke, M.D.
Herbert Benson, M.D.
Karen N. Olness, M.D.
David C. McClelland, Ph.D.
Francis O. Schmitt, Ph.D.
Otto Marx, M.D.
for ARCHAEUS PROJECT:
Editor
Dennis Stillings
Mnaging Edtor
Gail Duke
Dsign
Cathryn Stewart

Philosophy of Archaeus Project

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS over the last two centuries have indicated that the phenomena of life are
associated with various field phenomenaelectric, magnetic, and others of an undetermined nature.
Instrumentation and techniques that exploit some of the well known bioelectric and biomagnetic field
phenomena have been shown to be effective in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
It has become apparent that field phenomena exist that have resisted traditional attempts at modeling, and
which may hold potential for developing new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches based on the
capabilities of modern instrumentation. It is possible that these bioenergic fields can be modified so as to
induce alterations in the corresponding physical structures.
Further, there is every indication that consciousness produces profound changes in the physical condition of
the human body. Whatever the mechanism by which consciousness affects the body, it is reasonable to
assume that it does so by inducing changes in the body's physiological processes. These changes should be
measurable. These fields should then be subject to manipulation by the use of field-altering modalities,
including consciousness, or by combinations of approaches to alleviate underlying disease conditions.
Archaeus Project has been instituted for the purpose of researching these ideas through experimentation
and dialogues among leaders in the field.
Published by ARCHAEUS PROJECT
2402 University Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55114
Copyright 1988 by ARCHAEUS PROJECT
All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.